Lavinia thanked him and rose; the discussion about the tea table became
unbearably stupid, no better than the flat chatter of the nuns at
school.
Her room was small and barely furnished, with a thin rug over the stone
floor, and opened upon the court about which the house was built. The
Sanvianos occupied the second floor. Below, the _piano nobile_ was
rented by the proprietor of a great wine industry. It was evident that
he was going out to dinner, for his dark blue brougham was waiting at
the inner entrance. The horse, a fine sleek animal, was stamping
impatiently, with ringing shoes, on the paved court. A flowering
magnolia tree against one corner filled the thickening dusk with a
heavy palpitating sweetness.
Lavinia stayed for a long while at the ledge of her window. Her hair,
which she wore braided in a smooth heavy rope, slid out and hung free.
The brougham left, with a clatter of hoofs and a final clang of the
great iron-bound door on the street; above, white stars grew visible in
a blue dust. She dressed slowly, changing from one plain gown to
another hardly less simple. Before the mirror, in an unsatisfactory
lamplight, she studied her appearance in comparison with Gheta's.
She lacked the latter's lustrous pallor, the petal-like richness of
Gheta's skin. Lavinia's cheeks bore a perceptible flush, which she
detested and tried vainly to mask with powder. Her eyes, a clear bluish
gray, inherited from the Lombard strain in her mother, were not so much
fancied as her sister's brown; but at least they were more uncommon and
contrasted nicely with her straight dark bang.
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